


Off Balance and Falling Deeper

by Chichuri



Series: Choke Chain 'verse [3]
Category: Fringe
Genre: Alternate Reality, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-17
Updated: 2009-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 08:36:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chichuri/pseuds/Chichuri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick tries to convince Olivia to give Peter a chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off Balance and Falling Deeper

**Author's Note:**

> Bit of a side story from Chain You Down. In Chapter 2, Peter interrupts Olivia and Nick arguing; I found I needed to write Olivia's take on how the argument started before I wrote Peter's reaction.

Up at dawn, one hundred sit-ups, then half an hour in the training room before breakfast. Her morning routine doesn't change, no matter how everything else does.

Two words sum up everything that is now making her life chaotic: Peter Bishop.

Nick wanders down, late, probably up until all hours. With Peter. Again. He's played havoc on the routine she and Nick have spent years perfecting. No matter how Jones might insist, Peter isn't one of them, will never be one of them. It doesn't matter if he's lurking in her head, he doesn't belong here.

Despite herself, she reaches into that space that has been empty for so many years, follows her link to him. He's sleeping, deep in dreams of narrow escapes into freedom.

Nick grins knowingly at her; she feels his amusement as she drags herself back into her own skin. She still has problems staying in tune with one of them—the one that she occasionally _wants_ to allow deeper into her head—and not the other, and the echo of her reaching out to Peter resonates through her link to Nick.

She taps at the punching bag and glowers at Nick. "What time did you finally crawl off to bed?"

"After two," he says, unrepentant. "Peter was beating me; I had to turn the tables."

She doesn't say anything, but she doesn't bother to clamp down on her disapproval, either.

He laughs softly and takes over the punching bag. She idly counts off his blows, echoing the count through their link. She's at 53 when he says, "You should give the guy a chance."

She knows he feels that way, has known for a while, but now that he's stated it out loud she can't ignore it. "We don't need him."

"We do."

"Why? We've done fine for without him."

He shrugs, sidesteps the issue. "Someone needs to keep an eye on him."

"If Jones wants him, he can put someone else on babysitting duty."

"He's got useful tricks up his sleeve, abilities we can use. Have you even looked at his file? _Really_ studied it, including reading between the lines?"

It's annoying when Peter pulls that condescending act; from Nick it's infuriating. Glaring, she shoves at the bag and targets him with a kick he easily avoids. He rolls his eyes and breaks away, circling. She keeps her arms up and her hands fisted.

"We don't need him," she repeats. "We're doing just fine on our own."

She feints, he ducks, she circles. He bounces on his toes and watches her with wary eyes. "They put you two together for a reason."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does. Olive, we've been off balance since—"

"Shut. Up." Two punches, a left and a right, and this time she means it, going at him at top speed. He barely avoids the first, but the second connects, hard, and he winces away.

"Shit, Olive," he mutters, then she keeps him too busy ducking and weaving to talk. She ignores the stinging pain of the blows he lands on her, just focuses on him.

A lucky foot sweep trips her up and she's on the floor, pinned before she can roll away.

"Listen to me, Olive," Nick says insistently, knee planted in her stomach. "I'm spending enough time trying to convince him that you're not some ice queen. You have got to—"

"You've been talking about me?" When they're this close his surface emotions are wide open to her, and his conversations with Peter are in the top layers of his mind. She reaches in and grabs images, emotions, with barely a flicker of guilt. Sorts through scenes, bits and pieces of who she is shared with Peter, things he can use against her.

Nick said ice queen, but she knows Peter's thoughts aren't nearly so complementary. Maybe she is a monster. Maybe that's why Peter left in the first place. Idle thought and not true, even if sometimes she wonders if it's why she's so far from normal. What sets her apart. Why they chose her.

She sees the flames when she tries to blink away her hurt, remembers the burning and yelling. Snaps out of the past and into the present with effort. "You're supposed to report his actions to me, not the other way around." The betrayal is sour, roiling through her, and the words come out more broken than pissed.

"Olive?" Nick touches her cheek, his worry sliding against her, and she shoves him off her and out of her head, retreats to the other side of the room.

She pushes bitter memories down, hides her worries away so Nick can't see them and pity her and Peter can't find them and use them against her. "You can be buddy-buddy with him if you have to, but you have no right to bring me into it."

"I'm not playing anything. I like the guy." He leans against the opposite wall, folded arms a mirror to hers, expression just as impassive. "He was my friend too, or are you forgetting about that?"

She locks down her thoughts, blocks Nick from her mind. Shaking her head, she takes the stairs two at a time. Nick follows after, snagging her wrist when she hits the kitchen, and she whirls on him, shoves her free hand against his chest. "We agreed we couldn't trust him."

"_You_ decided. _I_ said we needed to reserve judgment."

"What? Are you trying to say he's one of us now?"

"I'm saying let go of your fucking bullshit grudge and see him for who he _is_. Keep at it and you'll make sure we'll never be _able_ to trust him."

She glares at him; he glares back, crowding her and keeping her trapped with an iron grip. The worst is he's right; she knows he is, he knows _she_ knows he is. But she can't give, not on this. Not now.

"I see him," she spits out. "Hell, half the time he's crawling through my head whether I want him to or not. He's a loose cannon, Nick, with no loyalty to anyone but himself."

Nick shakes his head. "On the surface, yeah, but you know that's not all there is to him. I've told you, over and over, reported every little bit he let slip that I thought might convince you, but you just don't want to listen."

"So you're reporting on me. Of _course_ you are."

Olivia flushes with chagrin at Peter's sardonic drawl. Despite her years of rigorous training, despite having a line into his head, he'd caught her unawares. He leans against the doorjamb, hair sticking every which way, eyes shadowed, and mind as solidly blocked against her as it's ever been. His expression shows wary cynicism and distrust.

Oh, hell. He'd trusted Nick, as far as Peter was capable of it. Now he'll be watching every word he says, every emotion he lets loose. They've lost one of the few edges they have against him.

Nick glances at Olivia and tries to tamp down his irritation so he can soothe Peter. "It's not like that—"

"Of course it is. You're a team. _Partners_. Why would I expect independent thought from either of you?" The sarcasm and disdain drip from Peter's voice.

"Because you're so much better?" Olivia scoffs. "Your only thought is how you can turn the situation to benefit yourself and how to slither your way out of it if it can't."

"Olivia," Nick snaps, glaring at her. "For once, let it go. Leave him the fuck alone."

She backs up a step at the wash of his anger; this time she walls herself off from him so thoroughly that he barely exists as a shadow in the back of her mind. Nick gets angry so rarely, she forgets he has a whiplash temper when provoked, forgets how much it hurts on the rare occasions he uses it on her.

Peter's eyes narrow and the furrow between his eyes grows deeper. He rides their link into her head, brushing through the outer layers of her walls and scraping through to what's underneath. She lets him, for a moment, lets the familiar touch of his mind ease the ache his disappearance left, then she stops him cold. He resists, and they scrabble before she can shove him back out.

Her link with Nick is tighter, but Peter is more likely to sidestep the obstacles she throws up to keep him out. Maybe his skill as an empath is better suited to slipping through emotional barriers to peer underneath, or maybe he's just less polite about it. Either way, he's better than he was; whatever other tricks he's gained from their years apart, he's a more skilled and more ruthless empath than he was as a boy.

Of course, back then she had less she wanted to hide.

"Fine," she finally says, voice brittle even to her own ears. She wants to say something else, to Nick or to Peter or to both of them, but she can't find words in the chaos of her mind. She swallows and whirls, blindly finding her way out of the house, away.


End file.
